Yoshikage Kira

The Nomu had been sent flying, and Kurogiri and Tomura Shigaraki had escaped. All the remaining enemies had chosen to stand quietly under the U.A. teachers' watch and surrender with their hands raised. All that remained was to clean up the battlefield.

Of the injured, Shota Aizawa and Thirteen were hurt more seriously and were sent to the hospital. Jilan Jiyu and Izuku Midoriya were carried away on stretchers to the infirmary. Although All Might was injured, he did not seek treatment. Instead, he had mysteriously vanished when the police rushed in. Presumably, he had gone to report what had happened to them.

By the time Jilan Jiyu woke up in a bed in the infirmary, it was already night. The lights were off, and as he sat up and reached for the lamp beside the bed, he saw the girl sleeping there and stopped.

Tsuyu Asui was wearing her U.A. High School uniform. Her long, dark green hair was loose instead of tied up as usual, and it was slightly damp. She smelled of shampoo, so she had probably showered at school. She had pulled a stool up to the bed and crossed her arms, resting her hands on the edge of the mattress. Her head lay on top of them, and she was snoring softly.

Jilan Jiyu did not turn on the light. He simply sat on the bed in the dark, silently watching her folded hands, a little bitterness in his heart.

Earlier, after using the move he had named "Tengen Toppa: Hamon Overdrive," he had fallen into a peculiar state. He could sense everything around him, but he could not move at all. It was as if he had left his body behind and his soul was controlling everything.

The reason Jilan Jiyu was unaffected by Tomura Shigaraki's Quirk was simple. Hamon was, in essence, a kind of energy. When it was released outside the body, it was called Hamon Overdrive.

Normally, Hamon spread outward when used. Some of that energy would scatter uncontrollably outside the body, producing a golden glow. In fact, however, this was a sign of poor control over Hamon.

When Jilan Jiyu gathered the energy in his head, the Hamon energy, which possessed the properties of the sun, instinctively resisted Shigaraki's Quirk, preventing it from altering the shape of Jilan Jiyu's brain. He then gathered the energy at a single point and released it all at once, forming a Hamon ray that appeared outwardly as a pillar of light. Of course, this had nothing whatsoever to do with Spiral Power.

Simply put, when Hamon covered the surface of Jilan Jiyu's body instead of being released, it rendered him immune to negative conditions such as petrification, freezing, and burning. A Quirk like Shigaraki's also fell within that range.

Of course, Shigaraki could not possibly have known the reason.

After entering that state of "feigned death," he watched everyone's actions from an overhead perspective. Katsuki Bakugo used several consecutive explosions to propel himself through the air and reach Izuku Midoriya; Shoto Todoroki created ice several meters away and slid over it, instantly freezing the Nomu; ...and Asui clung tightly to him, refusing to let go. None of it moved him much. He remained a calm observer throughout, analyzing the situation.

He had actually been a little puzzled when he saw All Might refuse the others' help, but he was soon shaken by the violent, brutal blows All Might and the Nomu landed on each other. He was caught up in All Might's spirit, too. Close combat really is a man's romance!

Suddenly, his whole body convulsed, and the entire scene became dull and uninteresting.

Jilan Jiyu felt as if a part of him had been stripped away, leaving him short of some of his emotions. When he turned around, he saw a blond, blue-eyed man in an impeccably neat suit floating beside him. At some point, a severed hand had appeared in the man's grasp, and he was looking at it with great interest.

"...Yoshikage Kira, why have you appeared?" Jilan Jiyu asked, his mouth dry. He had originally thought that the man named Yoshikage Kira was merely an obsession, or perhaps a byproduct of the Quirk "Killer Queen"-a side effect like anyone else's.

Izuku Midoriya's Quirk could break his bones, Tenya Iida's Quirk would suddenly stall after prolonged use, and Yuga Aoyama would get diarrhea if he used his Quirk for more than a second... Perfect Quirks had never existed; that was common knowledge in this society of heroes. Jilan Jiyu had taken it for granted that Yoshikage Kira was a similar side effect.

...But seeing him floating so clearly beside him, Jilan Jiyu knew he had been wrong all along. Yoshikage Kira really did exist.

"It's rare to find someone who looks like me, so don't make such a stupid, shocked face." Yoshikage Kira seemed to see through his thoughts. "Don't worry, I have no intention of possessing your body. I'm truly, unmistakably, completely dead. Oh, right, in your words, I died under the 'Jo-mbulance.'

"Liking women's hands, sudden urges for bloodshed, fingernails that grow incredibly fast..." Jilan Jiyu could tell that this man seemed willing to talk, so he seized the chance to ask about something that had long puzzled him. "Why do I have the same tastes and desires as you... Are you trying to say it's because my body craves those things too?"

Yoshikage Kira slowly shook his head, an expression of superiority on his face, as if he were mocking him, or perhaps pitying him. "Because we're the chosen ones."

"Are you trying to say you believe in a god? A god told you to kill people nonstop for more than a decade?" Jilan Jiyu found it a little ridiculous. He knew Yoshikage Kira was an out-and-out egoist, someone who could sacrifice even the father who had always helped him as a pawn.

"A god, yes, but an evil god..." Yoshikage Kira pressed the grayish-white hand to his face, looking utterly enraptured. "That man called Shigaraki really has no taste. This was the hand of a strong, kind woman, and he let it become so dry and shriveled...

"I can imagine her beautiful face perfectly. Even her decayed hand shines with radiance. It's just a shame I can't truly touch it..."

Jilan Jiyu turned his attention to the hand and immediately recognized it as the one he had failed to retrieve during his fight with Tomura Shigaraki, the one that had finally fallen into the water. Judging by Yoshikage Kira's words, he did not seem to be truly touching it, but had merely recreated its appearance.

"An evil god? Nyaruko, who carries a crowbar and thinks about love all day?" Jilan Jiyu forced himself not to look at the hand and frowned. "Don't use some so-called evil god as an excuse. Or have you gone mad, Yoshikage Kira?"

"Ah, just as I thought. As you are now, you don't understand anything. You're still just a fool who worships heroes in his heart..." Yoshikage Kira wore a gentle smile as he lowered the hand, took a handkerchief from his suit pocket, and carefully wiped it.

He said softly, "If one hasn't actually seen that indescribable terror, who would truly believe?"

"What are you trying to say?" Tormented by the oppressive atmosphere, Jilan Jiyu could bear it no longer and asked loudly, "Are you a man or a ghost now? Why did you suddenly appear before me?"

"As for me, I'm just a pitiful ghost who saw the scene below, straight out of a hot-blooded manga, and thought of the time before his own death."

Yoshikage Kira walked over to Jilan Jiyu, placing one foot in front of the other as though solid ground lay beneath him. He carefully straightened the wrinkles in Jilan Jiyu's tracksuit. "Don't reject these tastes that ordinary people can't accept. They're your shortcut to reaching that kind of existence."

Jilan Jiyu had no thought of resisting. Watching Yoshikage Kira carefully brush nonexistent dust off him, he asked blankly, "Why did I come to this world?"

As if manipulating a puppet, Yoshikage Kira took Jilan Jiyu's hand, placed the handkerchief in his palm, and curled his fingers shut one by one.

"That's something only you can find out for yourself."

When Jilan Jiyu came back to his senses, Yoshikage Kira was nowhere to be seen in the air. Time seemed not to have passed at all; the scene of All Might and the Nomu trading blows remained unchanged. Immediately afterward, All Might let out a roar and struck the Nomu skyward with a Shoryuken, sending it past Jilan Jiyu's shoulder.

Jilan Jiyu felt that, as the Nomu swept past him, its eyes met his for an instant, though he did not know whether it was an illusion. He looked down and saw that he was clutching a handkerchief with something wrapped inside.

Jilan Jiyu opened the meticulously folded handkerchief and lifted the final corner-inside was a toy car.

A toy car lay quietly on the cloth, with a menacing skull protruding from it and two bony claws extending from its sides.